WRITER

Oh Brother

The phone rings, interrupting a rare moment of quiet. Which robot is calling now? The one at CVS, reminding me for the third time to pick up a prescription? The City of Boston’s nutrition line, asserting that breakfast is key to my children’s educational development? Or our mystery caller, vaguely identified as “800 service” (i.e. marketing designed to waste my time). I investigate further, knowing that my wife gets annoyed if I let messages about retrieving the damned pills from CVS go to voicemail instead of listening for a second and then hanging up. It’s worse than I thought: “Big Brother” reads the Caller-ID screen. I knew that one day I’d be on Big Brother’s call list. (Though, in this case, I believe Big Sister was involved, too).